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SECONDARY EDUCATION

One could not expect to find distinctively American institutions among the colonists of the seventeenth century. There was as yet no distinctively American character. Two opposing influences were at work shaping the colonial life: the first was the spirit of protest against European institutions, which many of the colonists had brought with them from the Old World; the second was the ever-present instinct of imitation. Real American schools might be expected to develop with the development of real American nationality. In the beginning, there could be only such schools as might arise under the mingled influence of a desire to be like the mother-country and a desire to be different.

We find, as a matter of fact, the history of American secondary education presenting three pretty well-defined types and stages of development. There is, first, the colonial period, with its Latin grammar schools; secondly, the period extending from the revolutionary war to the middle of the nineteenth century, during which the attempt was made to solve the problem of American secondary education by means of the so-called academy; and, thirdly, the succeeding period down to the present time, chiefly characterized by the upgrowth of public high schools.

The specific influences which most vitally influenced the early development of secondary education in America were, on the one hand, the example of the "grammar schools" of old England; and, on the other hand, the rising spirit of democracy, in large measure Calvinistic as to its modes of thought, and in touch with movements in the Calvinistic portions of Europe.

THE BEGINNINGS

Early in the history of the colony of Virginia, funds were raised and lands set apart for the endowment of a Latin grammar school. But these promising beginnings were swept away by the Indian massacre of 1622, and the school seems never to have been opened. The town of Boston, in the Massachusetts Bay colony, set up a Latin school in 1635, which has had a continuous existence down to the present time. This school was established by vote of the citizens in a town meeting. It was supported in part by private donations, and in part by the rent of certain islands in the harbor, designated by the town for that purpose. A town rate seems also to have been levied when necessary to make up a salary of £50 a year for the master.

Other Massachusetts towns soon followed the example of Boston. The money for the support of these schools was obtained in a variety of ways. School fees were commonly but not universally collected. A town rate, which was depended upon at first only to supplement other sources of revenue, gradually came to be the main reliance; and by the middle of the eighteenth century the most of the grammar schools of Massachusetts charged no fee for tuition.

Latin schools were early established in the colonies included in the territory of the present state of Connecticut one at New Haven in 1641, and one at Hartford not later than 1642. A notable bequest left by Edward Hopkins, sometime governor of Connecticut colony, whose later years were passed in England, became available soon after the middle of the seventeenth century. The greater part of it was devoted to the maintenance of Latin grammar schools in Hartford and New Haven, and also in the towns of Hadley and Cambridge in Massachusetts.

now New York

The Dutch at New Amsterdam opened a Latin school in 1659. This school was continued for some years after the colony passed under English rule. Secondary schools were established in the colony of Penn

sylvania in the latter part of the seventeenth century. One of these, the William Penn Charter School, at Philadelphia, has continued down to the present day. King William's school, at Annapolis, was erected by the legislature of Maryland in 1696. Similar schools were from time to time established in different sections of the same colony. The eighteenth century saw schools of like character opened, partly by legislative enactment, partly by private initiative, in these and in the remaining colonies. Some of the number, like the University Grammar School in Rhode Island and the Free School at New York, were either the forerunners or the accompaniments of colonial colleges.

Not only were these several schools opened during the colonial period: important beginnings were made also in the organization of colonial systems of secondary education. The Puritan colony of Massachusetts took the lead in this movement. In 1647 the colonial legislature decreed that an elementary school should be maintained in every town having a population of fifty families; and that in every town having one hundred families there should be a grammar school, in which the students might be fitted for admission to the university.

This liberal provision was soon copied by the neighboring colonies of Connecticut and New Hampshire. In Connecticut the provision was afterwards changed to a requirement of a grammar school in each county town. These New England colonies maintained and enforced such provisions regarding grammar schools, with varying degrees of strictness, to be sure, down to and even after the revolutionary war. Maryland established by law a system of county grammar schools, thus keeping pace with the more northern colony of Connecticut.

The interest in secondary education declined and many schools fell into decay as the revolutionary period approached. When the colonies were transformed into states, after the declaration of independence, the four systems of schools mentioned above were continued with little

change. No other of the thirteen states had anything that could be called a system of public instruction.

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COLONIAL SCHOOLS

The chief emphasis in these schools was laid on the preparation of future collegians to pass the college entrance examination. The most of the schools were in this sense preparatory" or "fitting" schools. The requirements for admission to college determined their course of study. In the middle of the seventeenth century, the requirements of Harvard college, which fixed the scholastic standard for New England, are stated as follows: "When scholars had so far profited at the grammar schools that they could read any classical author into English, and readily make and speak true Latin, and write it in verse as well as prose; and perfectly decline the paradigms of nouns and verbs in the Greek tongue, they were judged capable of admission in Harvard college." A century later, the requirements of Princeton college, which profoundly influenced the secondary schools of the middle states, were described in these words: "Candidates for admission into the lowest or freshman class must be capable of composing grammatical Latin, translating Virgil, Cicero's Orations, and the four Evangelists in Greek; and by a late order * * must understand the principal rules of vulgar arithmetic."

*

The colonial grammar schools taught accordingly Latin, and a little Greek. They gave instruction in religion; but little else was added to the classical languages.

Social grades were pretty sharply distinguished in the colonies. The grammar schools and colleges were intended especially for the directive and professional classes. They had little if any connection with such elementary schools as there were. In Massachusetts, towns which maintained grammar schools were not required to maintain reading schools. Sometimes pupils were taught to read in grammar schools. But the grammar school teachers objected to this burden; and the mixing of the two grades of instruction in

one school was recognized as an evil. There seems to have been no middle grade of school, answering to the needs of a middle class in society. And for girls there was no provision whatever beyond occasional instruction in the merest rudiments of learning.

In the colleges, the ecclesiastical spirit and purpose was paramount. The students were for the most part preparing for the clerical vocation in some one of the Protestant denominations. But naturally only a part of the students in the grammar schools showed the disposition and the aptitude to pursue classical studies and enter the profession to which they led. The grammar schools exercised a kind of selective function, discovering latent capacity for the higher studies and starting talented youth on the way to college. Those who showed capacity of a lower grade or of a different sort seem to have received but little attention or encouragement in the schools of that day.

A TIME OF TRANSITION

As we approach the revolutionary period, we find new social conditions giving rise to a new order of schools. In the earlier days there had been, in most of the colonies, a close connection between ecclesiastical and political functions. With the growth of sectarian differences, there appeared a decided tendency toward the separation of governmental from ecclesiastical affairs. The grammar schools and colleges had been established for the public good as represented in both church and commonwealth. They had been founded and maintained by a remarkable combination of governmental, ecclesiastical, and private agency. Some of the colonies must be reckoned among the foremost of modern societies to exemplify direct governmental participation in educational affairs. But as governmental and ecclesiastical interests drew apart, the position of educational institutions was disturbed. This change tended to lessen the prestige of colonial systems of education among the more zealous adherents of the several religious denomina

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